The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.16 standard provides a technology and protocol for supporting a broadband wireless access. The IEEE 802.16-2001 started standardizing from 1999 and was approved in 2001. This is based on a single carrier physical layer called ‘WirelessMAN-sc’. Thereafter, the IEEE 802.16a standard was approved in 2003, in which a physical layer was added with ‘WirelessMAN-OFDM’ and ‘WirelessMAN-OFDMA’ in addition to ‘WirelessMAN-SC’. After the IEEE 802.16a standardization was completed, revised IEEE 802.16-2004 standard was approved in 2004. In order to correct bugs and errors of the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard, IEEE 802.16-2004/Cor1 (hereinafter, IEEE 802.16e) completed a format called ‘corrigendum’ in 2005.
Today, standardization for IEEE 802.16m that is the new technology standard is progressed based on IEEE 802.16e. The IEEE 802.16m that is the newly developed technology standard may be designed to support the IEEE 802.16e that is designed in advance. That is, a technology (IEEE 802.16m) of the newly designed system may be configured to be operated while efficiently including the existing technology (IEEE 802.16e). This is referred to as backward compatibility.
Hereinafter, a downlink (DL) means transmission from a base station to a user equipment and an uplink (UL) means transmission from a user equipment to a base station. The IEEE 802.16e system uses a time division duplex (TDD) type that divides an uplink and a downlink on a time by time basis, while the IEEE 802.16m system will adopt a frequency division duplex (FDD) type that divides an uplink and a downlink on a frequency by frequency basis in addition to the TDD type. In addition, in designing a frame of the IEEE 802.16m system, an extension of a bandwidth, a reduction in a cyclic prefix (CP) size, a transmission of a subframe unit in which a frame is divided into a plurality of subframes, or the like, are considered in order to improve a transmission rate. In addition, a frame that is different in a structure according to a case of supporting backward compatibility and a case of not supporting backward compatibility may be used the IEEE 802.16m system.
As described above, a need exists for a method of adaptively configuring an uplink control channel in a frame that may be variously configured.